Leumeah Public School

From the Principal's Desk 

 

Students and staff have settled into the term and are engaging in productive teaching and learning. 

 

 

Attendance to school – Every day counts

It is important that all children attend school regularly. Regular attendance to school helps children to: 

  • develop and maintain friendships
  • be more engaged in their learning
  • make consistent progress with their learning
  • develop a sense of belonging

Students who regularly miss school have higher rates of anxiety, as they worry about the learning that they have missed and the friends that they may have lost. This anxiety is made worse when they continue to miss more school. 

 

The picture below shows that just missing one day a fortnight can result with four weeks of lost learning over a year. Over a child’s school life this will equate to one year of learning. Allowing children to miss one day a fortnight, limits them to only achieving up to Year 11 in their learning. 

If a child misses one day per week, this will result in missing eight weeks of learning in a year. This will equate to two and a half years of learning lost over that child’s school life. This limits the child to only achieving up to half-way through Year 10. 

 

Our school’s rate of children who are attending 90% of the time is quite low. This can occur with current COVID-19 procedures, where students are displaying COVID-19 symptoms, which are similar to cold and flu symptoms, they must have a test and only return when they no longer have symptoms. 

 

However, there are children who are missing school for reasons that they should not be. The following are not acceptable reasons for students to be absent from school:

  • it is their birthday
  • school uniform is in the wash
  • studying for the Opportunity Class or Selective High School’s placement test
  • cannot find shoes
  • he / she felt sad
  • family holidays

These are the reasons that students can be absent from school:

  • being sick or having an infectious disease
  • having an unavoidable medical appointment
  • attending a recognised religious holiday event
  • exceptional or urgent family circumstances, e.g. attending a funeral (if the funeral is local only one day will be acceptable)

Children who are absent for more than two days need to have a medical certificate for their absence. 

 

If you are experiencing difficulty getting your child to school, please contact the class teacher or Ms Fair so we can support you with this. 

 

COVID-19 restriction updates

A reminder that although restrictions have eased, we are unable to physically distance adults by returning to our old processes. For this reason, we will continue with our current practices to ensure the safety of our community. 

 

In risk assessing the K-2 Easter hat parade, we determined that we cannot safely physically distance our community for the number of students we have and the outdoor areas that are available. We will live stream and video the parades to share with families. 

 

Thank you for being understanding during this time. If you have any questions about this, please contact the school. 

 

Parking around the school

We have new families to the school, who may not be aware of the area. Parking on Burrendong Rd, particularly in the afternoon can be very difficult. This results with parents parking illegally in bus, no stopping and no parking zones. 

 

There are a number of other streets and access points to Burrendong Rd. On the map below I have highlighted in green: 

  • Cotter Pl
  • Glenbawn Pl
  • Lostock Pl

Each one of these streets have alleyways at the end of them which lead to Burrendong Rd. These streets also come off Wyangala Cres (highlighted in purple). Please consider parking in one of these streets instead of parking illegally on Burrendong Rd. 

 

I have also highlighted in blue Parkhill Ave, which accesses the second entrance to the school. This entrance is not as busy as Burrendong Rd and it is often easier to get parking on Parkhill Ave than Burrendong Rd. Consider using this entrance, rather than parking illegally on Burrendong Rd. 

 

#proudprincipal

My first #proudprincipal is for our swimmers who represented Campbelltown zone at the Regional carnival:

  • Indi 3/4C
  • Leonora 3/4H
  • Makayla 3/4M
  • Ryder & Tiahna 5/6G
  • Ryan X 5/6K (Campbelltown zone age champion)
  • Peyton 5/6M
  • Jarvis M & Joshua B, 5/6S
  • Jairus 5/6T (Campbelltown zone age champion)

Peyton was very successful and will be representing Sydney South West at the NSW State championships. 

 

I attended the zone carnival and watched some of our swimmers in their freestyle finals. I was very impressed with students at LPS, their behaviour, their sportsmanship and of course their swimming!

 

My second #proudprincipal moment is for Raziah, Aymaan and Arittro from 5/6K. They are working on making their writing more descriptive. As you can see, they are doing well with their goals.